EA Sports MMA reviewed on Xbox 360 by Gloria Preston. Game supplied for review by Electronic Arts

MMA, or Mixed Martial Arts to give it its full title, has been around for a few years now, under various different guises. You may know it as Cage Fighting, or perhaps Ultimate Fighting, but it's all the same thing. It's been growing in popularity for a while, and it was only a matter of time before video games started appearing, THQ snapped up the licence for UFC last year and took the title unchallenged, this year EA has stepped in to the ring (or should that be cage) with its generically titled MMA. Can EA give the established title holder a run for its money, let's have a look.

Well, the most important part of any fighting game is the actual fighting itself, and in that department MMA is an impressive contender. The primary control method is through use of the right analogue stick, which gives you access to a variety of punches and elbow blows. Teaming that with the controller triggers will produce a range of kicks and parries, giving you an impressive set of attacking and defensive moves. These feel very intuitive, and don't take much getting used to, and most can be used no matter what position you're in, on your feet, in a clinch, or on the ground. The controllers face buttons add to your fighter's repertoire, allowing you to get your opponent in a clinch, take them down, and employ submission moves. This all makes for a very solid control system, and some creative use of the rumble function also adds to this by sending rumbles to your opponent's pad which allows you to fake them out. So, it fights a good fight, but like all fighting games really it's at its best in multiplayer.

Single Player
That doesn't mean the single player game isn't worth bothering with though, it's got plenty of meat on its bones and should hold your attention for a while. You get your standard single fight mode, and a somewhat strange tutorial that only tells you things once you've performed a move, but as with all sporting titles the career mode is the main event. Here you'll start off with some basic training exercises and some amateur fights before moving on to the regular cycle of professional fights. Between each fight you'll have to undergo eight weeks of training, where you can choose what areas you want to train in, maybe your stand up game needs a bit of work, or your groundwork could be improved. Whichever discipline you choose to train in you get an exercise, maybe perform a move within a time limit, perform the same move so many times, or run off a series of strikes. These will get progressively harder as you open up new exercises, and your stats build up, but luckily once you have performed an exercise once you can simulate it again, for the same results, so the training sessions never get too monotonous.

Initially your training is given by MMA legend Bas Rutten, but as you move up the ranks and through the leagues the opportunity arises to travel and train with other stalwarts of the sport such as Randy Couture, Pat Miletich and Rickson Gracie. So despite the lack of an official licence on the game it still has a lot of familiar faces from the sport, top that off with some nice commentating work from Frank Shamrock and Mauro Ranallo it shows it can still compete in the realism stakes without the big name backing. If there is one area the single player falls down a little though it has to be the games AI, I know it's unrealistic to expect a computer controlled opponent to behave the same as a human player, especially in a fighting game but I feel the AI in MMA is a little too cheap. This is especially evident when you reach the high level fights, where the AI will perform ridiculous feats, reversing or blocking everything you throw at them, or constantly chaining submissions until you have no chance. It's not consistently like this fortunately, but when it does happen to you it can be very frustrating.

In Camera
This is a small flaw in an otherwise good game though, it's a solid fighting game when you're playing other people, and the single player is packed full of features and options. The create a character system use to create your fighter for career mode is very comprehensive, allowing you to adjust almost all your fighters features and attributes. If you have an Xbox Vision camera you can even use your own face on your fighter, I found this great fun, and by pulling some mad faces when taking the photos managed to come up with some extraordinary results. The game also allows you to upload chosen highlights from your fights, be they single or multiplayer, so if you gave your mate a particularly brutal beating you can upload it to show all your friends how badly you beat him. On top of this is the Live Broadcasts feature, the good folks at EA keep an eye on the leaderboards and uploaded videos and choose opponents for scheduled live fights that anyone can tune in and watch. A good idea, not exactly original, but it certainly gives players an incentive to bring their A game to fights, and they could make the card for some of these prestige fights.

As first attempts go this is a very solid entry in to the genre from EA, I'm not sure it's going to topple THQ's game, but it certainly provides a viable alternative. Hardcore fans of the sport will probably go with the UFC licence, with its more comprehensive roster, for those who are less fanatical about it though will find MMA to be a match in every other department. So, really it's a coin toss between this and UFC Disputed if you're looking for a MMA game, whichever you choose you probably won't be disappointed, but if you're more of a gamer than a MMA fan then I'd say MMA is probably the slightly better choice.

EA Sports MMA is available now on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 from Amazon.